Joe Kiani

Kiani was born in Shiraz, Iran on September 16, 1964. Joe Kiani immigrated to the United States with his family at the age of nine. Joe Kiani's father was an engineer, and his mother was a nurse. Arriving in the United States, speaking no more than three words in English, Joe Kiani graduated from high school at the age of fifteen.

Joe Kiani enrolled in San Diego State University (SDSU), receiving bachelor's (B.S.E.E) and master's (M.S.E.E) degrees in electrical engineering by the age of 22.

Early career

Beginning in 1984, Joe Kiani worked as a CO-OP engineer at Burroughs in Rancho Bernardo, which later became Unisys. In 1986, he moved to Irvine and began working at Bell Industries and later at Anthem. In 1988, he began consulting for Newport Medical Electronics to build a low-cost pulse oximeter, where he discovered the motion artifact and low perfusion problems with pulse oximeters. He pitched the company a solution, which they declined. Following this, Joe Kiani left them and returned all the compensation they had given him. With a release he received from them, he founded Masimo in 1989.

Career at Masimo

Kiani founded the medical technology company Masimo in 1989 and was later joined by partner Mohammed Diab. The company is publicly traded and employs more than 8000 people worldwide. Joe Kiani and Mohammed Diab invented measures through motion and low perfusion pulse oximetry, and they reduced pulse oximeter false alarms by over 90% while detecting more true alarms. Joe Kiani holds more than 500 patents or patent applications for advanced signal processing, optical sensors, and wearable technologies. Masimo pulse oximetry is used to monitor over 200 million patients worldwide.

In 2011, Forbes named Masimo one of the top 20 public companies with revenue under a billion dollars based on earnings growth, sales growth, and return on equity.

Pulse oximetry is one of the most commonly used monitoring technologies in healthcare. Masimo makes a pulse oximetry technology known as Signal Extraction Technology (SET), which is the first pulse oximetry technology to reliably measure through motion and low perfusion conditions.<r

Since its introduction in 1995, Masimo SET pulse oximetry in over 100 independent and objective studies has outperformed other pulse oximetry technologies, providing increased sensitivity and specificity. Masimo SET helps clinicians reduce severe retinopathy of prematurity (ROP) in neonates and improve critical congenital heart disease (CCHD) screening in newborns. As of March 2021, ten published CCHD screening studies, all with positive conclusions and representing over 300,000 infants, including the largest CCHD study, have used Masimo SET. In addition, a 10-year study from Dartmouth showed that Masimo SET eliminated death and brain damage in the post-surgical wards and reduced cost by over $1.5M a year due to over 50% reduction in rapid response activation and transfers back to the ICU.

In 2022, under Kiani's direction, Masimo acquired Sound United premium audio brands including Bowers & Wilkins, Polk Audio, Denon, Marantz, Definitive Technology, Classé and Boston Acoustics. After the $1B+ acquisition was announced, Masimo's stock dropped by 38%, resulting in a $5B reduction in market capitalization. After Masimo ousted Joe Kiani, they sold Sound United to Harman International, a subsidiary of Samsung Electronics, for just $350 million in May 2025.

After activist investors won the majority of the Board, including Joe Kiani's position on the Board, on September 19, 2024, Joe Kiani resigned as CEO and currently leads Willow Laboratories, a health and wellness innovator focused on diabetes, based in Irvine, California, which holds 127 issued patents, 48 pending patents, and technologies.

Philanthropy and civic engagement

In 2019, Kiani began serving on the advisory board of the University of California, Irvine Susan and Henry Samueli College of Health Sciences. In 2020, Joe Kiani joined actors Chris Evans and Mark Kassen in creating A Starting Point, a video-based civic engagement platform.

In 2021, Joe Kiani started serving as a member of the Board of Trustees of the California Institute of Technology (Caltech), the Board of Councilors of the Carter Center, and the chair of the Board Quality Committee of the Children's Hospital of Orange County (CHOC).